August 15, 2026

I remember staring at a spreadsheet with tabs for chairs, mirrors, stations, shampoo units, waiting area sofas, lighting, and shelving. I had 40 tabs open and zero clarity. My budget was $15,000, and I was $6,000 over with nothing to show for it. That’s when I realized I needed a package deal, not a piecemeal […]

I watched a brow artist work for five minutes on a client who was sitting in a standard salon chair. The artist was on her knees, hunched over, asking the client to tilt her chin up repeatedly. It looked exhausting. The client was holding a hand mirror and squinting. That’s not a service—that’s an awkward

My first lash table was a massage table I borrowed from my roommate. It worked, but my back was bent over for hours, and clients had to twist their necks to breathe through the face cradle. After three months, I had a chiropractor bill and two clients who said they’d never come back because they

My third week into opening the shop, I had a client slip her feet into the basin and immediately yank them out. “It’s lukewarm, honey,” she said, giving me that look. The cheap bowl I’d bought off a marketplace site couldn’t hold heat past the first five minutes, and the jet pump sounded like a

A barber in Portland called me up. He wanted a vintage barber chair for his new shop. “I found one on Etsy for $1,800,” he said. “It’s from the 1950s. It looks amazing.” I asked him if it worked. “Well, the hydraulic pump needs to be rebuilt, and the leather is cracked, but it’ll look

My feet hurt just thinking about it. A stylist in Chicago told me she stands 9 hours a day, 5 days a week. She wasn’t complaining about the clients. She was complaining about her chair. “The one I have is too low,” she said. “I have to lean over all day. My back is wrecked.”

I was in a new salon in Austin last week. They had a tiny room, maybe 200 square feet. But they wanted to do haircuts, facials, and waxing all in that one room. The owner asked me, “What chair do I buy?” The answer: an all purpose salon chair. These are the chameleons of the

I got a phone call from a salon owner in Atlanta. “My hydraulic salon chair won’t stay up,” she said. “It sinks to the floor whenever a client sits down. My stylist is basically squatting to cut hair.” I asked her how much she paid. “$120,” she said. I told her that was the problem.

Last year, a shop owner in Houston called me. She’d bought six “cheap recliner salon chairs” from a local supplier. Six months later, the pump on one died, the vinyl on another started peeling, and the swivel on a third got so stiff that her stylist actually threw her back out. She wasn’t mad at

Last week a barber from Chicago called me. He’d bought three reclining salon chairs from an auction site — they looked great in photos but the recline mechanism was a friction lever that slipped under a 180lb client. He said he’d have been better off buying office chairs. I told him: a salon chair that